Melusine, or MELUSINA, the name of a fairy lady who figures prominently in the celebrated medieval French romance so called, the motif of which is similar to that of the legend of Eros (Cupid) and Psyche, is of far-reaching antiquity, and has many parallels and analogues in the legends and popular fictions of most countries, Asiatic as well as European. Briefly stated, Melusine consents to marry a knight called Raymondin, or Raymond, on the condition that he should never see her on a certain day every week, to which he binds himself by solemn oaths. She bears him eight sons, the warlike exploits of seven of whom occupy the greater portion of this entertaining romance. At length Raymond is induced by his brother to break his promise, and on the usual day of Melusine's seclusion he discovers her in a bath, the lower part of her body being like a great serpent. Soon after this Raymond, enraged at the cruelty of one of his sons, upbraids the innocent Melusine as 'a false serpent,' whose offspring could never come to any permanent good. Melusine forgives him, but her doom cannot be averted, and, after a touching scene, she takes her flight through the window in the likeness of a monstrous dragon; and in this form she afterwards appeared hovering near the castle of Lusignan—erected by her own fairy power for her beloved lord Raymond—when ever one of her descendants was about to die, thus acting the part of the Irish Banshee.
In the myth of Cupid and Psyche the mortal maiden is not to behold her celestial spouse; but, incited by her envious sisters, she takes a lighted lamp to look upon him one night as he lies asleep, and, in her agitation at beholding his marvellous beauty, a drop of oil from the lamp falls on him, whereupon he and the splendid palace vanish, and Psyche finds herself on a desolate heath. She is reunited to him, however, after performing a number of seemingly impossible tasks by order of her vindictive mother-in-law, Venus. This myth has deeply penetrated European folklore. In a Sicilian tale a girl is married to a green bird, who changes to a handsome young man on bathing in a pan of milk. She is not to ask his name. In a Norse tale a prince is bewitched by his step-mother, so that he is a white bear by day and a man by night; in a Danish tale, a wolf; in a Chilian tale (of European origin doubtless), a hideous black man; and in all three, and many other analogues and variants, the bride loses her enchanted spouse for a time in the same manner as in the Greco-Roman myth, which several learned scholars have endeavoured to interpret as typifying the natural phenomenon of the Dawn.
One of the oldest legends of this class is the Hindu myth of Urvasi and Purúravas, the condition which the celestial nymph imposes on her husband being that she is not to see him naked—which Mr Andrew Lang (Custom and Myth) considers, with good reason, as signifying 'a custom of women.' Pressine, the mother of Melusine, imposes on her husband, the king of Albany, the condition that he should never see her in child- bed. He forgets his promise and loses his fairy spouse. According to a Spanish legend of the princely family of Haro, a lord of Biscay, while chasing the wild boar, meets with a fairy, who consents to wed him if he promise never to pronounce a holy name in her presence.—In another Hindu legend, Bheki, the frog, is a maiden who consents to marry a king on the condition that he never shows her a drop of water: being faint one day, she asked her husband for water, which he gave her, forgetting his promise, and she disappeared.
A very striking parallel to the legend of Melusine is found in a tale current among the Estonians, in which a wandering youth falls in love with a maiden sitting on a rock by the shore, who takes him (like Undine with the knight in Fouqué's charming tale) down into a submarine palace, where she marries him, but imposes on him one condition, that he must not seek to see her on a Thursday. His curiosity at length overpowers his prudence, and he discovers her in a great tank of water, with the lower part of her body like that of a fish, the result being that he finds himself near his native village, where nobody knows him, for he is now an old man, and all his relatives are dead. Undine is also a daughter of the stream, and she makes her husband promise that he will never speak angrily to her when on or near any water. So, too, in the Persian tale of King Ruzvanshah and the Turkish tale of the king of Yemen, both of whom espouse daughters of the genii; the condition is that the husband must not question or complain of anything his wife should do, however strange it might appear. Such conditions occur so frequently in the fairy tales of almost every people (see also LOHENGRIN); and it may be added that tales of Forbidden Chambers, familiar to readers of the Arabian Nights, of which many examples are current in Europe, are closely allied to legends of the Urvasi and Purúravas, Eros and Psyche, and Melusina cycle.
See Max-Müller's Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii.; Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages; Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations (1870); Grimm's Teutonic Mythology (trans. Stalybrass); Clouston's Popular Tales and Fictions (1887); Clouston's Group of Eastern Romances and Stories (1889); and the old English version of the romance of Melusine, from the French of John of Arras (1387), printed for the Early English Text Society (1891), from a unique MS. of the 15th century, with full appendix notes by the present writer on the Cupid and Psyche and Melusina cycle of legends.